There are plenty of actions you can take to ensure your blog is hack proof, and here are 5 of the simplest ones you can implement on your blog right now.

1. Make sure you have upgraded to the latest version of WordPress.

This may seem like an obvious one, but there are still many people I know who do not keep their version of WordPress up to date. Every time there are new WordPress versions available they include several security patches in them. These security patches are necessary to make sure your blog stays safe.

2. Take the meta information off your front page of your blog.

Many, many blogs I visit regularly still have their meta information in their sidebar or the footer. You know that little widget that shows the following options:

* Login

*Logout

*Wordpress

*xhtml

What you are basically doing by keeping this on the front of your blog is advertising your WordPress login page to your visitors.

3. Make sure your username and password are hard to guess.

The default Wordpress username is Admin, and many people just stick with this one. Although it’s easier for you to remember, unfortunately it’s also easier for the hackers to guess. You might also change your password every couple of weeks in your dashboard.

4. Install the WP security scan plugin.

Once installed, the WP security scan plugin will scan your Wordpress blog and find anything that makes your blog vulnerable. If it does find any weak spots in your blog installation, it will suggest what you can do to fix it.

5. Make sure you back up your blog.

Lastly and probably the most important step is ensuring that you have a back up copy of your blogs files and database. Then if your blog does get hacked, you will be able to have it back online in no time at all.

As you can see the 5 steps above are not rocket science, and some may even seem pretty obvious to you. But many many blogs I have encountered do not even take these five simple steps to ensure their blog is protected.

Wordpress has many widgets already built into its software and they are simple and quick to add to your blog. To view which widgets are available and to add them to your blog you need to first login to your Wordpress dashboard, and then click on the design tab at the top. Then you need to choose “widgets”. You should then see a page that looks like this (click to enlarge):

On the left you can see the widgets you have available and on the right you can see the widgets that you have already added to your blog. To add a widget to your sidebar you simply have to choose the one you want and click on “add”. Be sure to save your changes, then take a look at your blog to see your widget in action.

Here is a run-down of the widgets that you will already have available on your standard Wordpress installation.

Pages - This puts a list of your Wordpress pages into your sidebar on your blog.

Calendar - This is a widget that puts a calender on to the front of your Wordpress blog, which shows the dates of your posts. Clicking on a “clickable” calendar date will show your readers the post(s) published on that date.

Archives - This shows a list of your older Wordpress posts usually separated into monthly categories.

Links - This shows a list of your Wordpress links, also known as a blogroll. You can add any links you like here. You might eventually swap links with other Wordpress users, link to other relevant sites you own or think your readers will find useful, or link out to affiliate products in order to collect a commission.

Meta - This widget puts your a box in your sidebar displaying your blog information such as login and logout.

Search - This widget adds a search box on your blog, allowing your visitors to search your content using keywords.

Recent posts - This adds a list on your blog’s sidebar of your most recent blog posts.

Tag cloud - This widget adds a cloud of all the tags you have used on your posts, with most frequently used tags bolded, enlarged, or otherwise highlighted. Your blog visitors can click on these tags and easily find the content that they are looking for.

Categories - This adds a list of your Wordpress categories to your sidebar.

Text - This widget is used to place anything you like into your sidebar. You can use plain text, or use html and other types of code here.

RSS - The RSS widget allows you to take someone else’s feed and add it to your sidebar. Of course there may be better plugins available that do a better job.

This is just a small list of some of the widgets that are automatically available for use on your blog. Certain plugins that you install may give you more widget options to choose from.

First thing you need to do is sign up for a free Google analytics account. Once you have entered your blog details, you will receive a code that you need to insert into your theme code. That code will look something like this:

Login to your Wordpress dashboard and click on the “Design” tab. Then choose the “theme editor” link, and open up the footer theme file. Copy and paste your Google Analytics code into there, right after the </body> tag and before the </html> tag like this:

Click on save, and now you are able to track all your visitors and what they are doing on your site.

Alternatively, if you don’t like messing with your Wordpress code. you can download this free plugin: Adsense plugin that does all the work for you.

1. The very first thing you will need to do is change the nameservers on your domain name so that they point to your new hosting. If you have no idea how to change the nameservers on your domain then take a look at this earlier post about changing nameservers.

2. Once your nameservers have changed you need to login to your hosting cpanel and click on “phpmyadmin”. You should see a screen that looks like this:

Choose the database that belongs to your Wordpress blog on the left and click on it. Once you have chosen your database click on export at the top of your screen.

Then make sure “Add DROP TABLE/VIEW/PROCEDURE/FUNCTION” has a tick next to it like this:

Then scroll down to the bottom click on “Save as file”, choose “zipped” and click on “GO”. You could make a new file on your desktop and name it “blog transfer” and store this sql file inside for safe keeping.

3. Next step is to download all your Wordpress files from your server. I use my favorite ftp to do this. It is a free download from Coreftp.com. Once you have your ftp software connected to your server, locate all your Wordpress files and download them into the folder you created earlier titled “blog transfer”.

So what we have now is two sets of files, one set is your actual Wordpress files and the other is you sql database file.

4. Our next step is to upload all these files to your new web host. The first thing we need to do is make a new database. Write down your database name, database username, and password as you will need these in a moment. Once your database is created, go to “phpmyadmin” and select your newly created database from the left hand side. Next, click on “import” up at the top of your page.

Then click on browse and find your sql file you downloaded earlier. Next, click on “GO”. It may take a few moments for your sql file to upload so be patient at this point.

5. The next thing you must do is change the details in your “wp-config.php” file. This is to ensure that your Wordpress files connect with your new database. Look inside the folder you made on your desktop to store your files that you downloaded earlier and open up “wp-config.php”. Remember you wrote down your database name, username and password earlier? Well this is what you need to change in this file.

6. Once you have edited those details, your very last step is to upload those Wordpress files to your new hosting account using your ftp. You have now successfully transferred your Wordpress blog.

Whenever I install a new Wordpress blog there a few plugins that I immediately install I call these my “Must have plugins”.

All In One SEO Pack

This plugin helps with SEO. This plugin adds another option on your writ post or page screen so that you can choose your meta name, description and keywords for each individual post or page. If you go to “settings” in your wordpress dashboard and the choose “all in one seo” you can also choose to add meta information for the front page of your blog.

Wordpress Automatic Upgrade

Every now and again you will notice that your Wordpress installation or certain plugins need upgrading to the newer version. Normaly you would have to download the new version and upload it to your site which can become a pain in the butt. This plugin makes the upgrade process of both your Wordpress installation and plugins as easy as a few clicks in your dashboard.

Google XML Sitemaps

This plugin automaticaly generates a sitemap for the search engines to crawl and find all your new posts or pages. If you want your site to be indexed fast you definately need this plugin.

Statpress

This plugin helps you track stats about your bog. It tracks visitors, spiders, where your visitors come from and what keywords they typed in to find your blog. You can view all this information from right inside your dashboard.

Add To Any Share/Save/Bookmark

Once installed this plugin adds a little bar automaticaly at the end of each of your posts which lets your site visitors bookmark your blog to their favorite social bookmarking sites. This can help increase your traffic.

These are only my top 5 essential plugins and I use a lot more on different blogs, it all depends on what the blogs purpose is. There are literaly thousands of plugins to choose from, you can view a large list at the Wordpress.org plugins directory.

Installing plugins is similar to installing a new theme. Once you have downloaded and unzipped the ones you wish to use to your desktop. Use Core FTP to connect to your site similar to how you would connect if you wanted to instal a theme. But instead of opening up the “themes” folder upload it to the “plugins” folder.

Next login to your Wordpress dashboard. Click on “plugins” and then activate them.

First of all, you need to find a theme that you like. Here is a list of my favorite Wordpress theme sites with thousands of free themes to choose from:

WordpressThemesFree.com

FreeWordpressThemes.net

Themes-Rock-Kitty.net

TopWPThemes.com

SkinPress.com

AmazingWordpressThemes.com

ThemeHybrid.com

Free Revolution Themes

Once you have found a theme that you like you should see a download link by the side of it. Click on this link, download, and unzip it to your desktop.

Next, you need to upload the theme folder to your blog. To do this you need to download some FTP software. All the FTP software does is allow you to upload and download files from your hosting server. I use a free FTP software called “Core FTP Light” .

Once you have downloaded your FTP software and set it up to connect to your site you need to find your “wp-content” folder. Click on it and then click on your “themes” folder like in the screenshot below.

Once you are inside your themes folder, choose the theme files from the left and click on the little blue arrow that points to the right to upload your theme.

Once your theme has finished uploading your next step is to login to your Wordpress dashboard. Next click on “Design” and you should see the theme that you uploaded there. Choose your theme and then click on “Activate Theme”.

There you have it, you have just given your Wordpress blog a completely new look :).

Now that we have those three things sorted out, we can move on to the actual installation process.

The first thing we need to do is login to your hosting cpanel, and find the “Fantastico De Luxe” option (it is typically identified with a smiley face icon). Once you click on it, you should see a list of options along the left hand side. Click on the Wordpress option, then choose new installation.

Next, you will be presented with a screen like this:

From the dropdown menu, choose the domain on which you’d like to install Wordpress. Fill in your details like in the above diagram, but make sure you leave the box that says “install in directory” empty. Don’t forget to take note of your “administrator username” and “password”, as you will need this information to login to your Wordpress dashboard. After you have clicked “Install Wordpress”, the next screen will ask you to “Finish Installation”. Click this and we are done.

If you now go to your website you should see something like this:

The very last step is to login to your Wordpress dashboard and have a good look around. You will be able to do this by typing you site address in your searchbar followed by /wp-login.php, and entering your login details. Your host may send you an email with a link to the login screen.

For hosting I strongly recommend Hostgator. Whenever I have had a problem with anything (even if it wasn’t their fault) I received top notch customer service. I use their $9.99 a month baby plan and pay monthly for it. If you pay for 3 years in advance you get it $7.95 a month. For this price you can host unlimited domains with them. Most of the tutorials you find here will feature screenshots from hostgator cpanel, but if you are using other hosting don’t worry, it will probably be similar.

Now that you have the domain name of your choice and some hosting we can get started.

1. The first thing you need to do is point your domain name to your hosting. We do this by changing the nameservers. If you have hosting with Hostgator you would have received your nameserver information in your welcome email, and it would have looked something like this:

ns989.hostgator.com

ns990.hostgator.com

Next, login to your Namecheap account, and find the domain name that you will be using. Once you have found your domain name click on it and you should see an option on the left that says “Domain Name Server Setup”. Click on this and you should see a screen that looks like this:

Enter your Nameserver details into the top two spaces and click on save changes.

Next, login to your cpanel, and find the “addon domains” icon. Click on it and you should be presented with a page that looks like this:

Enter in your details like above but replace “yoursitename.com” with your actual site name. Click on “Add Domain”, and you are done. You have now pointed your domain to your hosting account, and are ready to install Wordpress on that domain. All pictures that are in this post are taken from Namecheap and Hostgator. If you use different hosting or registered your domain name elsewhere, don’t worry, it should look similar to the images above.

Wordpress first started in 2003, and at first was a major underdog in the blogging world. But as the years have gone on Wordpress has become more and more powerful with its many themes and plugins. It has now become the blogging platform of choice in the blogging world.

Before we go any further you should know there are two types of Wordpress: Wordpress.com and Wordpress.org.While both are free (in theory) to use there are many differences between the two.

Wordpress.com

• Completely free to use
• Hosted with Wordpress
• Some great free themes but there is a limited variety
• Unable to use plugins
• Unable to monetize
• You will usualy use a Wordpress subdomain (something like www.yoursitename.Wordpress.com)

Wordpress.org

• Downladable blogging software
• You need your own Domain
• You need your own hosting
• Massive amount of themes available both free and paid all over the web
• Massive amount of plugins available to download (we will talk more about themes and plugins later :-))
• You are able to monetize (we will also talk more about this later)

In this blog we will mainly be talking about Wordpress.org as it is way more fun and versatile to work with. You will find all kind of handy tips and tricks from the very basics, to customizing your blogs, and from monetizing to promoting your blog. I hope you enjoy and feel free to leave your comments both good and bad.